"Saturday Night Live likes to mock the news not make it but this week controversy followed the announcement of three new actors joining the cast the reason well it turns out stand up comedian Shane Gillis one of the three had it made a series of racist and homophobic remarks in one episode of his podcast uses a racial slur and makes fun of Chinese accidents during a discussion about China town and in another episode he uses gay slurs to describe comedians he doesn't think are funny and here are to reporter Angela bond joins us now he Andrew tails off so I guess the first question I have is what is the vetting process at Saturday Night Live foreign you higher I mean don't they go back and look at all the public material they can find about a comedian so yeah we reached out to NBC to try to you know ask that very question and they haven't gone back to us yet what we do know is that the hiring firing process behind SNL is all very mysterious and like hard to see through you know I'm here a lot of stories about people who didn't know that they were getting hired until somebody congratulated them or they didn't know that they were getting fired until like I know you guys gonna fight until I read in the newspaper it's all very like weird and stuff but what we do know about this sort of situation is that people tend to weather the storm in twenty sixteen Milicevic S. in your got hired and she deleted a bunch of tweets that were racist and you know she's still hanging around and you know Michael che always get some heat online for things he says and he's still the host of weekend update so they sort of just like bunker down and weather the storm okay will tell us a little more about this guy Xing Gillis I understand you saw him perform at the new faces showcase at the just for laughs comedy festival you picked him out as a stand up comic yeah what was his life so yeah just for the people who don't know new faces is a place where like up and coming comedians can perform in front of agents and people can like can change their life essentially right so his said were. was fifty percent I'm bad at Saks unlike Khanna pudgy feel weird about it rate like very very well might place for comedy and the other fifty percent of his comedy was about how he's from Mechanicsburg Pennsylvania and he just moved to New York and you sort of like straddling the line between his like racists stuff his uncle's post on Facebook and like the aggressively woke friends he's making now in New York and just sort of trying to traverse the two worlds and his set got you know I put on the list because this I got a lot of laughs it's great like timing and like be aggressive energy that's in this podcast was sort of like shaved off just enough time you know these are make any actual racist comments every sort of like racist comments was sort of like couched in like all my uncle Joe seats Cabernet click that sort of fell in the noise coming from him yeah exactly yeah so has Gillis responded to all of this anger that's coming at him now he posted a statement last night saying that you know he pushes boundaries he has a whole backlog of podcast and jokes that he makes and you know a lot of the times they miss but he's also trying to push the boundaries of comedy right whether or not that includes you know making racist jokes is I know it is a part of his name was if anyone is actually offended yeah I'm sorry yeah so he's not exactly saying that what he said but for bands or maybe he's like opening up a hotline for people call up and like Hey listen I was being very charitable there right okay in the meanwhile while all of this is going on this chain kill as another one of the new cast members was announced this week for SNL was bowing Yang who's actually the show's first Asian American cast member so this is awkward timing yeah it is kind of awkward I mean Boeing Yang being the first Asian higher at SNL was big news when they now since first happening we should say that Fred Armisen rob Schneider both like part Asian but he's our first elbowing Yang is their first Asian full time cast member and what should be a time for some to celebrate it's been sort of swallowed up by the Xing Gillis news. that's."

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Saturday Night Live, Fifty Percent discussed on All Things Considered

Automatic TRANSCRIPT

Saturday Night Live likes to mock the news not make it but this week controversy followed the announcement of three new actors joining the cast the reason well it turns out stand up comedian Shane Gillis one of the three had it made a series of racist and homophobic remarks in one episode of his podcast uses a racial slur and makes fun of Chinese accidents during a discussion about China town and in another episode he uses gay slurs to describe comedians he doesn't think are funny and here are to reporter Angela bond joins us now he Andrew tails off so I guess the first question I have is what is the vetting process at Saturday Night Live foreign you higher I mean don't they go back and look at all the public material they can find about a comedian so yeah we reached out to NBC to try to you know ask that very question and they haven't gone back to us yet what we do know is that the hiring firing process behind SNL is all very mysterious and like hard to see through you know I'm here a lot of stories about people who didn't know that they were getting hired until somebody congratulated them or they didn't know that they were getting fired until like I know you guys gonna fight until I read in the newspaper it's all very like weird and stuff but what we do know about this sort of situation is that people tend to weather the storm in twenty sixteen Milicevic S. in your got hired and she deleted a bunch of tweets that were racist and you know she's still hanging around and you know Michael che always get some heat online for things he says and he's still the host of weekend update so they sort of just like bunker down and weather the storm okay will tell us a little more about this guy Xing Gillis I understand you saw him perform at the new faces showcase at the just for laughs comedy festival you picked him out as a stand up comic yeah what was his life so yeah just for the people who don't know new faces is a place where like up and coming comedians can perform in front of agents and people can like can change their life essentially right so his said were. was fifty percent I'm bad at Saks unlike Khanna pudgy feel weird about it rate like very very well might place for comedy and the other fifty percent of his comedy was about how he's from Mechanicsburg Pennsylvania and he just moved to New York and you sort of like straddling the line between his like racists stuff his uncle's post on Facebook and like the aggressively woke friends he's making now in New York and just sort of trying to traverse the two worlds and his set got you know I put on the list because this I got a lot of laughs it's great like timing and like be aggressive energy that's in this podcast was sort of like shaved off just enough time you know these are make any actual racist comments every sort of like racist comments was sort of like couched in like all my uncle Joe seats Cabernet click that sort of fell in the noise coming from him yeah exactly yeah so has Gillis responded to all of this anger that's coming at him now he posted a statement last night saying that you know he pushes boundaries he has a whole backlog of podcast and jokes that he makes and you know a lot of the times they miss but he's also trying to push the boundaries of comedy right whether or not that includes you know making racist jokes is I know it is a part of his name was if anyone is actually offended yeah I'm sorry yeah so he's not exactly saying that what he said but for bands or maybe he's like opening up a hotline for people call up and like Hey listen I was being very charitable there right okay in the meanwhile while all of this is going on this chain kill as another one of the new cast members was announced this week for SNL was bowing Yang who's actually the show's first Asian American cast member so this is awkward timing yeah it is kind of awkward I mean Boeing Yang being the first Asian higher at SNL was big news when they now since first happening we should say that Fred Armisen rob Schneider both like part Asian but he's our first elbowing Yang is their first Asian full time cast member and what should be a time for some to celebrate it's been sort of swallowed up by the Xing Gillis news. that's.